Tuesday, December 2, 2014

If I Should Die Before I Post...

I was at a party one night and we were all drinking like
hell because that was what we did. And you know, every once in a while you’ll
get into a decent conversation with someone and you’ll like them for not taking
it over, or being too weird about their own opinion, or dismissing yours, and
it’ll be sort of a nice walk through the woods and not a race and not some
twenty mile march. So this guy’s name was Carl, and he was friends with the
people who owned the house and he told me he had to leave because he was going
fishing the next day, and then he paused and said, “Hey, come go fishing with
me tomorrow!” and I nearly said yes, even though I don’t fish.

The next day rolls around and I thought to myself, you could
start fishing again, and it was nice to think I had made a friend. A few hours
later a woman called me to tell me Carl had been killed on the way home. He
fell asleep at the wheel at slammed into a tree.

You know, I regret not telling Carl I would go fishing with
him. A few hours after he and I sat down in a room full of drinking people he
was dead but I still remember how he tried to explain to me how he thought the
fish were going to be biting the next day. I thought his theory was unsound,
unfounded, more superstitious than anything else, but the man had a way of
believing without trying to drag anyone else along with him. I can’t remember a
word he said, but he was just a decent sort of guy. I’m sorry he’s dead. That’s
all that needs to be said.

Yesterday one of the people who rose to the occasion and
donated to Lucas’ operation was nearly in a bad wreck. We’ve stayed in contact,
via email, text, photos, and that sort of thing, and she sent me great coffee
for my birthday. But she realized, and I do now, that the internet has some
flaws as far as communication; if she had been killed how in the hell would I
ever know it? We don’t any mutual friends. Would there be any real way for me
to find out what happened or how it happened? We’re decided to tell someone,
“Hey, if I die, email this person for me” and I hope it goes a lot more
carefully than just that, but still, you know what I mean, don’t you?

My life insurance is going to cover the mutts very well and
have a lot left over. I’ve made provisions for them. But what about you? There
are people I have never met, may never meet, who I have never spoken to on the
phone and might not ever speak to in my life, whose lives I’m grown attached to
in various ways.

I’ve watched children grow up here, I’m watched parents die,
I’ve seen new homes and new pets. People I know have gotten married. People I
know have gotten divorced. I’ve met some people live and in person and actually
became, uh, intimate, with some of the women I’ve met online. Long distance
relationships very rarely work but the success rate for good old fashioned
marriage is about 50-50. Besides, there is always something terrible erotic
about meeting someone you have no idea who they might be! Unless they’re a
fifteen hundred pounds rabid grizzly. Then it’s no fun.

But suppose you wake up tomorrow and your favorite FB person
hasn’t posted a photo of her cat sleeping on her head, again. Or some guy
hasn’t said a word about the snow, or someone you send a FB happy birthday to
just isn’t responding. Yeah, this is the internet and you might discover that
the 32 year old mother of two from Cleveland Ohio was a fourteen year old High
School guy who loved to write weird things. But what if someone you care about
online is actually very much dead in real life? I mean, really, really care
about?

There are those people who will tell you, after that first
pang of fear, when someone you’ve known for a while online, isn’t answering
private messages, or texts, or even pokes, that you cannot care about those who
you’ve never met. But you know this person. There hasn’t been a thank god for
coffee post in two days, doesn’t that strike you as very odd? But then you
notice that other people are trying to get some sort of response and then
there’s this trading of messages about someone who knows this person in real
life and…

All of a sudden you wonder if you should go to the funeral.
“Hi! My name is Mike Firesmith and I traded online conversations with your sons
for a few years and I am going to miss his sense of humor and the fact that he
loved his cat.”

You know, I think a lot of people would understand that.

I would. I do.

So here’s what I’m going to be asking some of you for in the
near future. I want a real time someone who know if you’re alive or dead on a
regular basis. I want someone I can send an email to and they can email me back
and say, “Yep she’s just totally pissed at you. That’s why she isn’t speaking
to you anymore” and that makes a lot more sense than death, really, when it
comes to me and women.

The difficult thing here is I’m not sure who to offer you in
return. My life is so compartmentalized and I have so many names I’m pretty
sure they’ll have to have more than one fire just to cremate us all. But I’ll
see what I can do. I just realized there are people who have never met me who
know me a lot better than some people who have known me all my life.

7 comments:

I think about this quite a bit. Not just in this aspect but also in my work life. I am a check out chick (cashier) and I have watched my regulars become grandparents, survive relationships, childbirth, cancer, tragedy. One man I got to know so well I knew when he had not eaten properly (elderly single man) and was heading for a diabetic event. I would make him sit down and eat something while I scanned his shopping so I knew he would be safe getting home. Most of these interactions happened with out any knowledge of their family. No one knew there was a cashier worrying about there Mum/Dad/Grandparent. No one would think to come and tell me if something had happened.The connections we make have no rhyme or reason. I know I get through my days with as much help from my 'real people' as i do from the virtual friends I carry with me each day. Some times more. I know how I feel about that. I feel like I have a world full of support. I have people on at least three continents that choose to care about me. That is very comforting thing. You are important to me.

We had a regular over at B&P who just disappeared suddenly. We started worrying about her when she hadn't commented in a while. We knew her pretty well but didn't know very much about her outside life except the few things she shared over time. I had her email address and emailed her but never got a reply. After a little detective work by me and other readers we discovered she had died.I'm sure if something happened to me my daughter or friends and family would let the B&P community know. It is something to think about.

When I die there will be so many people who owe me money dancing in the streets it may make the national news.

Spending much time online, hell, even a message board moderator for years and years, the 32 year old mother of two who was a high school guy, popped up fairly often. Some were that extreme, but usually it was a smaller discrepancy like embellishments to what they felt was a boring life, or not wanting to admit (even to themselves?) they failed at a goal they wanted pretty badly.

Some people freak out when they discover someone they had been interacting with wasn’t what they thought. I often wondered if the freakers had taken what the thought they knew, and proceeded to fill in the blanks from their imagination, to make this internet spectre a whole person, a trophy friend.

I always felt if I enjoyed them as they presented themselves, I’d continue to enjoy them as long as they stayed in character. Let’s face it, the people you work with or interact with on a regular basis, are all acting, presenting to the world who they wish to be. Unless you become close friends and get your lives intertwined you won’t know they’re making soap from orphan children in their cellar.

Bruce, I wonder if the higher expectations of the internet, as far as who people are, comes from some people only being able to be real here. They never have to see the people they like so they are more apt to just be who they really are and expect others to do the same. But people are people and they are usually the same wherever you go.

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The Non Disclaimer

My writing reflects the things I see, think, and experience, and those things in my past that have led me to be me. It is not always pretty, it is not always funny, and no one has ever made mention of my life as a Disney Movie. If sex, drugs, profanity, or a general irreverence for all things religious somehow offends you, well, there are other blogs which will satisfy your need for self assurance.